Mazzini Home Page

Piero Mazzini

Assistant Professor

Email: [[v|pmazzini]]
Phone: (804) 684-7882
Interests: Coastal physical oceanography
Office: Andrews Hall 236
Section: Coastal & Ocean Processes

Lab Website

Coastal Oceanography

Education
  • Ph.D., Physical Oceanography, Oregon State University, 2014
  • M.S., Physical Oceanography, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil , 2009
  • B.S., (Honors), Oceanography, University of Vale do Itajai, Brazil, 2006
Research Interests

I am a coastal physical oceanographer, and my research focuses on understanding how the coastal ocean responds to freshwater input from rivers, winds, waves, tides, and the exchange processes among estuaries, continental shelf, and the deep ocean. My interests go beyond the realms of physical oceanography, and include also the role that ocean currents play in the transport and fate of sediments, oxygen, nutrients, dispersion of pollutants, and how they impact water quality and the health of marine ecosystem. The ocean is a complex, chaotic system, with three-dimensional properties that vary in time, in intricate and beautiful ways. In my research I use a combination of different technologies and tools to study the coastal ocean, such as moorings, shipboard surveys, satellite remote sensing,numerical modeling and others.

Selected Publications
  • Gentemann, C.L., J.P. Scott, P.L.F. Mazzini, C. Pianca, S. Akella, P.J. Minnett, P. Cornillon, B. Fox-Kemper, I. Cetinić, T.M. Chin, J. Gomez-Valdes, J. Vazquez-Cuervo, V. Tsontos, L. Yu, R. Jenkins, S. De Halleux, D. Peacock, N. Cohen. Saildrone: adaptively sampling the marine environment. (2020). Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
  • Mazzini, P.L.F. , Chant, R.J., Scully, M.E.,Wilkin, J.,Hunter, E.J., and N.J. Nidzieko (2019). The impact of wind-forcing on the thermal wind shear of a river plume. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 124.
  • Fisher, A., Nidzieko, N., Scully, M., Chant, R., Hunter, E., and P.L.F. Mazzini (2018). Turbulent mixing in a far-field plume during the transition to upwelling conditions: microstructure observations from an AUV. Geophysical Research Letters.
  • A.T. Lemos, R.D.R. Ghisolfi, P.L.F. Mazzini, Annual phytoplankton blooming using satellite-derived chlorophyll-a data around the Vitória-Trindade Chain, Southeastern Brazil (2018). Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers.
  • C.A.F. Schettini, E.C. Domingues, E.C. Truccolo, J.C. Oliveira Filho, P.L.F. Mazzini (2017). Seasonal variability of water masses and currents at the eastern Brazilian continental shelf (7.5–9∘ S). 2017. Regional Studies in Marine Science , Volume 16, 131-144.
  • Mazzini, P.L.F. and Chant, R.J. Two-dimensional circulation and mixing in the far field of a surface-advected river plume (2016). Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 121, 3757-3776.
  • Mazzini, P.L.F., C. M. Risien, J. A. Barth, S. Pierce, A. Erofeev, E. Dever, M. Kosro, M. Levine, R. K. Shearman, M. Vardaro (2015). Anomalous near-surface low-salinity pulses off the central Oregon coast. Nature Scientific Reports , 5, 17145.
  • Mazzini, P.L.F., J.A. Barth, R.K. Shearman, and A. Erofeev. Buoyancy-driven coastal currents off Oregon during fall and winter (2014). Journal of Physical Oceanography , 44, 28542876.
  • Mazzini, P.L.F., and J. A. Barth. A comparison of mechanisms generating vertical transport in the Brazilian coastal upwelling regions (2013). Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans , 118, 59775993.
  • Pianca, C., P.L.F. Mazzini, and E. Siegle. Brazilian offshore wave climate based on NWW3 reanalysis (2010). Brazilian Journal of Oceanography , vol.58, n.1, pp. 53-70.